Analysis of a Short Film: LOVEFIELD

LOVEFIELD (2008)
Director: Mathieu Ratthe

‘LOVEFIELD’ is a short film directed and produced by Mathieu Ratthe. At the beginning of the film (when usually any production companies that have been involved in a film etc are shown) is a logo for ‘Matt Ratt Productions’ which is the directors own production company, showing this film was solely made and funded by him. The films running time is nearly 05.30 minutes long.  The genre of this short is a thriller; this is due to the film containing conventions you would expect to see in a thriller film as it uses a build up of suspense, tension and excitement throughout. This film such as stereotypical thrillers  heavily stimulate the viewer's moods giving them a high level of anticipation, ultra-heightened expectation, uncertainty, surprise, anxiety and/or terror. Also the convention of a plot twist which you find in both thrillers and short films is used at the end. The film received a good reception and won best short film at the Tremblant film festival in 2007. It’s also had quite a successful viewing rate on YouTube with figures currently standing at: 1, 075, 653. The target audience for this would be people are the age of 12+ this is due to its slight use of blood and the hinting of a murder at the start; also due to it being a short film you would expect mainly adults to take an interest and watch it because adults are the most likely age bracket to have an interest in short films.

The film opens with the title of the movies ‘LOVEFIELD’, it is shown in a simple form of white lettering over a long shot of a dried cornfield, this is also the establishing shot for when the titles fade out to show the audience where the film is set, on location in a cornfield. During in the title and from the beginning of the film and throughout incidental music is played which varies from slow and low pitched sound too fast and high pitched depending on the scene; this incidental music is used to surround and compliment the action taking place and to build up tension e.g the sudden fast music is played when the bloody knife is stabbed into the ground to provoke the audiences to a state of surprise and tension compared to when gentle music is used at the end once the baby is born to show happiness and peace. Diegetic is sound is also used for example with the swinging sign at the start with the crow sitting on top to give off an eerie feeling and then again with the crows squawking throughout.

The use of camera shots varies throughout. As mentioned before the film opens with an establishing shot, the camera than tilts to eventually get into a shot from within the dried up cornfield. Then is a close up on the crow which is used to foreshadow death and therefore gives the impression to the audience that something bad is going to happen. As the camera pans throughout the field the sound of a mobile phone becomes more prominent, till eventually the camera comes across an abandoned phone which is shot using a close up, this builds up the tension as you begin to wonder why there is a phone randomly abandoned in a field. Suddenly we hear crying and shrieks of a woman to then see a hand clutching the dried corn, it is clear the woman is in pain due to the shrieking. We then see a bloody rag which the audience start to wonder if the girl is being murdered, the camera continues to pan until we see what we presume is the girl’s foot which is bloody, bare and is clenching to show the pain she is experiencing. The camera then says on a close up of the foot; the foot stops moving and the incidental music builds up and gets high pitched to then suddenly stop along with the stopping of the foot.  We then she a knife being abruptly slammed into the ground covered n blood and leaving the audience thinking she is dead; when this happens the music happens with it to also build up tension to a sharp end when the knife is in the ground.  A tilt is then used to show the ‘killer’ which seems to look like a hillbilly with the camera specifically focusing on this skull and cross bone tattoo giving the audience a deeper impression of him as a murderer.  Then a long shot of him in the field alone is used to show the isolation of the location.  The camera then tracks the guy to his car as he runs at this point the audience presume he is running away from the scene of the crime.

Throughout all this the camera is constantly going back to a close up of the crow to use as foreshadowing and to force the viewer into a deeper belief that a murder has just took place. Eventually the man gets to his car which is parked on side of the road we see him hastily trying to get the boot of his car open, during in this scene the squawking of the crow is still heard to reinforce the idea of murderer and to make the audience feel uncomfortable.  We then see him grab a bin bag through a medium shot and then shot reverse shot is used between the man and the crow looking at each other intensely. The man then grabs a piece of cloth and begins to walk back to the supposed scene of the crime, as he is carrying these items the viewer believes he is going to get the body and take it away so there would be no evidence.

 Once the man returns to scene of the crime he is seen kneeling down to then cover up the camera with the cloth to show the covering up of the body, during in this the music gradually gets a harsher tone to its sound. Until, we are then presented with the sound of a baby crying and we see that its turns out the woman had given birth and the man was helping her through it. The mother is then introduced to us in a close up to emphasis the happiness she is feeling. The editing in this film is mainly cuts but there is a lot of use of fades especially when the camera moves throughout the cornfield.

The twist at the ending of this short film is one of the main conventions within the short film genre. Another convention used is its minimal use of dialogue.